Indiegogo Announces Campaigns Now Accepting Canadian Dollars

By: Kevin Green  |   December 7th, 2012   |   Business, News, O Canada

Indiegogo is a popular San Francisco-based startup that uses crowd sourcing to help artists and charitable causes raise money for projects. The site offers its services for a percentage of the money raised on its platform and Canadian entrepreneurs have realized that Indiegogo is a great way to start projects that would otherwise not be able to receive funding from traditional methods. The user base in Canada may grow even further after the crowd sourcing venture announced on December 5 that it would now be offering campaigners the ability to collect funds in Canadian dollars.

 

Indiegogo already has successful Canadian technology campaigns running on its ite including Toronto based Interaxon and Vancouver based Moj.io. Interaxon wants to bring its brain-sensing headband called “Muse” to market and has gotten more than US$235,000. Moj.io wants to raise US$100,000 to help develop a product that will let apps connect to your car.

 

Indiegogo’s appeal to Canadians is quite simple. Unlike competitor Kickstarter, Indiegogo can be used by anyone and does not require residency in the US or UK.

 

Canada is the second biggest market for Indiegogo and the move to accept Canadian currency is a no brainer. The startup also announced that its site will also be accessible in French. Co-founder Danae Ringelman spoke about the country and said, “Canada was one of first countries to embrace us that wasn’t the U.S. We’ve had Canadian campaigns on Indiegogo since pretty much the beginning. According to Ringelmann, US campaigns make up seventy per cent of Indiegogo’s business and the remaining part is international business which is dominated by Canadian campaigns.”

 

Ringelmann explained that, “While most campaigns raise money from more than one country, still a large amount of funding comes from the country of origin, where the campaign is. So we want to be able to provide a familiar funding experience.” She added that, “There was a little bit of friction given the fact that we were only available in U.S. dollars so we wanted to completely remove that.”

 

Indiegogo also has plans to add other currencies including the Euro and British pound sterling. German access will also be added by next month and the startup has goals of starting local versions of the site for Canada, Britain, France and Germany.

 

Source: Financial Post